II. A Report From Oras
Two men sit at each end of a narrow table, hunched over a shallow lamp, a wick floating in oil and burning with a fishy stench. Blankets are hung over every aperture, the air is thick with smells: old fish, the oil in the lamp, man-sweat, a lingering hint of incense too redolent of norit for the comfort of either. Outside, the wind is blowing hard; the boat rubs against the wharf, breathing and flexing and creaking, caught by the tail of a storm passing out to sea and flicking at the edges of the estuary.
Coperic smoothed a hand along the thin tough paper (a waterproof membrane, the innerskin of a kertasfa, and the small closely packed lines of glyphs on it written in waterproof ink) and read in a low drone the words written there. The fisher Intii, Vann, was illiterate by choice, but his memory was phenomenal. If he had no chance to pass on the written report, he could whisper it into the ears of that member of Coperic’s web who came for it. He listened, eyes hooded beneath brows like tangled hedges.
“The Army is complete. No arrivals for the past three tendays. These are the numbers. Five bands of youngling Sleykinin. About a score in each. Say a hundred, hundred ten in all. Full Assassins, hard to say, scattered like they are, no more than two or three in a bunch. Maybe another hundred. I have to depend on remembering mask patterns and can only count those I happen to see. In the streets and around the camp, maybe a hundred as I said, probably more. Small band of Minark nobles and their attendants, three sixes of nobles, five attendants each, three-score ten in all, keep to themselves except when they go roaring through Oras, chasing whomever they take a notion to hunt. Wild card, might break through where more seasoned and disciplined troops can’t. Watch ’em. Four bands of mounted archers, majilarni from the eastern grasslands. Their rambuts are fast and maneuverable, give a steadier seat to bowmen than macain do. Disciplined within the band; outside, it’s ragged. Very apt to take offense at a look or a word and start a brawl. So far Nekaz Kole has them under control, but it’s a weakness that might be exploited. Nekaz Kole of Ogogehia has taken over as Imperatora General of the army. From what I hear, Malenx, whom Floarin appointed Guard General after Hern took out Morescad, resents the man and would work against him if he dared but he’s terrified of the minark norit who’s running Floarin. Kole brought two thousand picked men across the Sutireh Sea with him, the best, I hear, from the mercenary bands of Ogogehia-across-the-Sea. They’re going to be the toughest to face, got their own officer cadre, sappers, engineers expert at building and working siege engines. Two thousand light armed foot soldiers, fast and flexible, many of them competent archers and slingers, all of them expert with those short swords they carry, handle a pike better than a master reaper swings his scythe. Been watching them work out and got a shiver in my belly. Expensive, too. Floarin’s beggaring the mijloc to pay them. Next most dangerous, the Plaz Guards. They’re being used mostly to officer the conscripts from the Cimpia Plain. About two thousand of these. Farmers, clumsy and unskilled, just meat to throw against the Wall, far as I can tell. A few exceptions. Two bands of slingers, ragged slippery types, look to me like landless poachers, but they’re good and accurate. Just how much use they’ll be in a battle is hard to say. About thirty of them. A few others are archers, can hit a target before it bites them. Maybe another thirty. The rest they give pikes to and shields and set to marching until they sweat off a lot of suet and can more or less keep together. About a third of these look sullen and slack off when they can, maybe wouldn’t fight if their families weren’t hostage for their good behavior. The others are convinced Followers. Won’t stop before they’re dead. Norits and norids. I didn’t bother trying to separate these; it’s hard to tell them apart unless you see them in action. Anyway, of the Nor, there are maybe five hundred. One last thing, the army goes through food like a razimut gorging for its winter sleep, so Floarin keeps the tithe wagons rolling, the butchers up to their necks in blood, the fishers hauling their nets. The outcasts up in the mountains are really hurting her when they take the wagons. If we could free the fisher villages, that would be another telling blow against her. She rides out in her warcar whenever she gets worried, harangues some of the men about the moral principles they’re defending. They hear her patiently enough, considering that most are there for her gold and don’t give a copper uncset who rules in the mijloc or why. Oras-folk get out to listen, that’s about the only time we can pass the gates, officially at least; generally me and the others, we’re out to see what we can and only listen for the look of it.” He lifted his head. “That’s all that’s on here.” He looked a last time at the paper, rolled it into a tight tube and passed it across the table.
Coperic was a small wiry man, shadow like smears of ink in the deep lines from his nose to the corners of a thin but shapely mouth, in the rayed lines about eyes narrowed to creases against the wisps of greasy smoke rising from the lamp. There was a tired cleverness in his face, a restrained vitality in his slight body. “How soon before you can leave?”
Vann slid the tube back and forth between his thumb and forefinger. “Soon as the storm passes.” He was a lanky long man with gray-streaked brown hair and beard twisted into elaborate plaits, thin lips pressed into near invisibility when he wasn’t speaking. “This norit fights wide of storms and the blow out to sea, he’s a monster, too much for trash to handle. Norit likes him; a nice following wind and a flat sea and that’s what he give me when it’s him I’m taking south.” He moved his long legs, eased them out past Coperic’s feet. His mouth stretched into a tight smile. “He’s got a queasy belly.”
“Your usual ferrying job, or is this one special?” Coperic leaned farther over the table, his smallish hands pressed flat on the boards, his eyes narrowed to slits.
The Intii stroked his beard. “They don’t talk to me.” The oiled plaits slid silently under his gnarled hand. “Norit’s been buzzing back and forth between here and up there,” he nodded his head toward the walled city on the cliffs high above the wharves where his boat was moored, “grinding his teeth because the storm kept hanging on. I’d say this one was important. To him, anyway. What’s happening with the army?”
“Gates been closed on us the past three days, traxim flying like they got foot-rot, there’s a smell of something about to happen round the Plaz and the Temple. I’d say they’re getting set to move. I wouldn’t wager a copper uncset against your norit taking word to Sankoy to get their men moved to the passes so they’ll be ready to join up with this bunch. You better walk careful, Vann. Shove that,” he flicked a finger at the paper tube, “down deep in the mossy cask the norit won’t want to drink from. If what we think’s right, he’ll be twitchy as a lappet in a kanka flock.”
The Intii shifted his feet again, plucked at his eyebrow, his face drawn, the anger in him silent but all the more intense for that. “They think they got me netted.” He reached out to the paper tube, rolled it with delicate touches a few inches one way, then the other. “Kappra Shaman living in my house. Norit leaning on my son when he go out with the boats. Figure I got no way to move, so they forget about me, don’t even see me these days.”
The fisher villages on the tappatas along the coast south of Oras had been built by families determined to live their lives their own way, calling no man master, sheltered from most attack by the mountains and the sea, sheltered behind their village walls from attack by the Kapperim tribes who came up from the Sankoy hills on stock and slave raids when the spring thaws opened the mountain passes. The fisher-folk made for themselves most of what they needed; anything else they traded for in Oras, the various families of each village taking turns carrying fish to Oras to sell for the coins the whole village shared. They worked hard, kept themselves to themselves, exchanged daughters between the villages, managed to survive relatively unchanged for several hundred years.